Problem with BookDesigner on large book

[Megatron-UK]

I'm converting a PDF of a large book (Stephen Kings 'The Stand', uncut version) using BookDesigner and I'm having a few issues when outputting to LRF.

The PDF imports relatively cleanly and I've removed all of the erroneous TOC entries, so that it is a clean list of chapters now; divided into Sections. So I have one page with all of the Chapter links for Book 1 as follows:

Chapter1 Chapter2 Chapter3
Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6
etc..

... and then all the links for Book 2 on a second page, and Book 3 on a third.

All main text is paragraph formatted and I have inserted scans of the 12 illustrations as found in the book into the correct locations.

The problem is that when I generate the LRF output, instead of the correct structure:

Title page and Author
------
Book 1 chapters TOC
------
Book 2 chapters TOC
------
Book 3 chapters TOC
------
Chapter 1
------
Chapters N <- interspersed with illustrations at the correct places
------
Final Chapter
------

I get the following messed up format:

Title page and Author
------
Book 1 chapters TOC
Book 2 chapters TOC
Book 3 chapters TOC
------
Illustration 1
Illustration 2
Illustration 3
...
Illustration 10
Illustration 11
Illustration 12
------
Chapters 1 through to the Final Chapter <- No illustrations

So I seem to have several problems;
1. The page break I insert between the TOC pages are removed.
2. Nearly all the chapter links in the TOC pages stop working - ie they don't highlight and you can't click them.
3. The remainder of the *working* links in the TOC pages link to Illustration 12, no matter where they link to in the book.
4. All of the text in the document changes to centred and what appears to be a bold font.
5. All of the illustrations are moved to directly after the TOC pages, despite being inserted into the correct locations in the text.

This kind of output hasn't happend with anything else I've converted - it's all looked pretty good so far.
It does generate a large LRF file - 2.8Mb and around 2600 pages, so I am wondering if I am hitting a limit or some sort of bug?

[Megatron-UK]

I've now tested the LRF with Sony's eBook Library viewer and though all of the links in the TOC are active, they still always link to page 15.

The rest of the problems still remain.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[Megatron-UK]

Ok. Got my page breaks back with the 'User page breaks' tick box in the output options screen.

Still have the problems with the Chapter links all going to page 15 though, the illustrations collected in the front, and the wierd centred, bold text.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It sounds like BD is having problems organising the PDF info, not a surprise with PDFs. Although you can solve many of those problems manually working within BD (and its HTML code), setting the PDF up an interim application might be easier on you.

You may want to think about moving the PDF to a word processing app like Word, or possibly to HTML, where it should be easier to re-arrange things to their proper location.

[Patricia]

The centred bold text is almost certainly BD making it into a (very long) title (or possibly subtitle). I've had this problem occasionally. Check by going to 'tools' then 'element browser' and look for titles (then subtitles). You can correct it by selecting each paragraph and reassigning it as a paragraph.
This sometimes takes ages, but is probably responsible for a lot of the TOC problems.

You may well find it faster to take Steve Jordan's advice.

I don't think the size should be the problem: I've made 5 Mb books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Patricia

The centred bold text is almost certainly BD making it into a (very long) title (or possibly subtitle). I've had this problem occasionally. Check by going to 'tools' then 'element browser' and look for titles (then subtitles). You can correct it by selecting each paragraph and reassigning it as a paragraph.
This sometimes takes ages, but is probably responsible for a lot of the TOC problems.

For SERIOUSLY messed up stuff, you can highlight the offending block and then use the "HTML fragment editor" tool which allows you to directly edit the HTML.

I don't think the size should be the problem: I've made 5 Mb books.

My largest one so far is, I think, 12MB (the illustrated version of "Old Curiosity Shop")

[Megatron-UK]

Thanks guys. I'll take a look at those options - I did have a quick scan through the element browser and it didn't *look* like the offending text was set to Title, but I'll check more thoroughly.